Sculpture 2 Essay, Research Paper

The first show I read about was “SOUND SCULPTURE WITH RESONATORS”, premereing in New York and traviling o citsy such as, Toronto, Sydney and Melbourne, from 1972 to 1978

This was an ongoing series of small installations made in alternative spaces and small galleries. It came out of a fascination with the idea that the world is musical at any given moment, if one has a musical point of view. Large resonant objects, such as bell jars and large wine-making bottles were particularly interesting in their ability to transform even traffic noise into very musical results by being natural acoustic filters and echo chambers. The installations involved placing resonant objects on the roof or some other outdoor part of a building and putting small microphones inside each object that would transmit the musical resonance to an indoor gallery space.

This interest in the resonance of objects has recently continued in several projects in Europe, such as “Perpetual Motion” in Saint Denis, France.

This sound sculpture used the bells of the historic 12th century Basilica of Saint Denis as a subject. The bells have not been rung in more than 100 years, because one of the bell towers which originally housed these bells burnt down in a thunderstorm. The bells were moved to the remaining tower, but are not rung because the tower was not designed to withstand the stress of the bells ringing. However, these long, silent bells continually make a sound that no one has ever heard, the perpetual sound of the resonant frequencies of the bell excited by ambient sound pressure levels. Sensitive microphones were installed inside of the bells and transmitted the sounds to a sculptural installation of loudspeakers at the exhibition site

In the near future, a permanent work will be created for the new Diozesanmuseum Koln, in which ancient medieval bells from their collection will be permanently mounted on the roof of their new museum to become the ears of the building (with microphones permanently installed inside each bell to transmit to a gallery space inside).

The best way to discribe the beauty of this is to ask that for a moment you emagen yoursefe in a movie theater. Now its about 5 minutes before the movie starts the people in the theater are a-buz, there are 6 conversations about what the movie will be like, 5 about the things they want to do after the movie, 7 about the things they did befor the movie, as well as the couple behind you that have been making out for some time now. The sculpture itsefe is all around you, it is in the walls, the seets, the movie going public, the sticky stuff found on the ground, and the art lyes in the noise it all makes.

Now the THX sound comes on and the patrons grow quite, the room and the difernt people become one as they are redy to be drawn as one in to the movie that they have baught the ticket for, all of this out of the sound.

So as artprogress over time it seems to become more of an expression of our everyday world, and something like Sound Sculptire when the object of the sculpture is not the physical aperance at all, but instead the noise that serounds it, is most defenatly the next step.